stew·ard. noun \ˈstü-ərd : A person whose responsibility it is to take care of something.

Monday, March 4, 2013

UNO Birthday Party

I have had so much fun sharing our Sesame Street Party on the blog and facebook! It has finally given me the push into the world of Pinterest and I am excited to discover a new way to challenge my creativity and party planning. We have another first birthday coming up in May for Baby #2 and I thought I wanted to share Baby #1's first birthday party from last year which was UNO themed! We had so much fun planning and throwing this party!! I love the many hats I get to wear as a mom and all the different opportunities I am presented with to get creative and do something I love!

Our kitchen set the stage for our main party area and I decorated using a combination of decks UNO cards (both retro styles and modern), handmade UNO card banners and signs and color coordinated foods and balloons. I tried to make sure everything was either White, Black, Red, Blue, Green or Yellow to stay true to our colorful theme!

This was my favorite decoration, our faux UNO birthday cake! I wanted the birthday boy to have a candle to blow out and a nice decoration for his photos but without the sugary overload. So his "cake" was made using scraps of cardboard and taped into circle tiers. I hot glued retro UNO cards on to each tier in color sets with some WILD card mixed in and a candle on top. It doubled as our table centerpiece.

I cut out letters and used bright colored paper to make a homemade birthday banner of UNO cards as well as made some large cards out of poster paper. These aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I really enjoy our party decorations being a mix of store bought/hand made. I love the idea of using a cricut for this which would be less time consuming and more "professional" looking than mine. So if you have a cricut I would say go for it! If not, I think the old pencil and scissors works just fine too :)

We served almost all plant based foods and I made up several "trays" with our colorful snacks. I made my goal to be to use as little disposable products as possible. I did buy the blue takeout containers from Dollar Tree (3 for $1.00) to make my UNO popcorn caddies.

I really wanted to highlight his first year in photos so that our guests could look at how much he has grown in this first year! I edited his monthly photos to Black and White and taped them onto bright colored papers, using the UNO cards to label how old he was in each photo and this decorated our drink buffet. We served water with lemon and lime slices. Very refreshing and super simple. Nothing beats ice cold water!

Our family each had a UNO shirt that I made using the freezer paper method and some paints. I wanted a number 2 card on mine since I was preggo with baby #2 and my husband had a 3 card. The birthday boy's was the back of the card design.

Decorated the high chair with some balloons, cards and I sewed him a matching bib with a painted messy/splash design and a number 1 in the middle.

Probably my favorite photo of him of the day.

The popcorn was a big hit. I made it on the stove top using butter flavored grapeseed oil and just a dash of sea salt.